On Tuesday, May 18, in busy rush hour traffic, a suicide bomber drove his Toyota minivan, packed with 1650 lbs. of explosives, alongside a NATO convoy in Kabul, Afghanistan and detonated. Eighteen people were killed, including five American soldiers and one Canadian. Forty-seven others were wounded.

According to an NYPD Shield Intelligence brief, it was the deadliest attack on foreign forces operating in Kabul this year. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

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The very next day, an estimated thirty to forty Taliban fighters launched a brazen, pre-dawn assault on U.S.-run Bagram Airbase, thirty miles north of Kabul. Though sixteen Taliban insurgents (four of whom were intended to be used as suicide bombers) were killed, at the end of the spectacular attack one U.S. contractor had been left dead and nine to twelve service members were wounded.

The Taliban took credit once again and claimed that seven suicide bombers had detonated at Bagram’s gates while thirty other fighters slipped inside; a report the U.S. military flatly denies. But did the U.S. military have advance information that the suicide bombing attacks were imminent? According to sources in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the answer appears to be yes.

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Today, in 2001, troops of the Northern Alliance took control of Kabul, capital of Afghanistan.

The future for Afghanistan may not be as bright as it was today, eight years ago.